Hello, and thanks for reading!

In QuickLogic news, we announced our ArcticLink 3 S2 LP today, a silicon variant of the standard S2.

The S2 LP offers a solution to OEMs who need the absolute lowest power for their wearable devices.  Now, the S2 LP does absolutely everything the standard S2 does — but it reduces the active power consumption to as low as 75µW. To most, the difference between 75µW and 150µW wouldn’t seem like much.  Certainly nothing compared to the power consumption of a display or Bluetooth device.  However, when you look at the internal design of a wearable device, the power consumption of the sensor hub can make a huge difference.

When we estimate the battery life of a wearable device, we take into account a number of factors: the battery capacity, the Bluetooth (or other connectivity) device, processor, display, sensor(s) used, sensor hub, and various regulators and peripherals.  A duty cycle of each is assumed — for instance, the Bluetooth is likely not always on and communicating with a host, as this would be very counter-productive to battery life.   Frankly, almost everything in a wearable is only on a certain percentage of the time; that is, except the sensor sub-system (hub + sensors).   In most wearables, the sensor hub and accelerometer sensors are always-on (always-on, always-aware, as you’ve heard use repeat over and over…).  Because of this, even though the sensor sub-system consumes less active power when compared to the active power consumption of other sub-systems of the wearable, it is a much larger percentage of overall system power consumption.

Which is why the lowest power consumption possible for a sensor hub is very important — and which is why, in our estimation, the ArcticLink 3 S2 LP can extend the single charge battery life of a typical wearable device by almost 20% versus the standard S2.  And never mind the difference versus other sensor hub solutions that are 4x, 8x, or 10x the power consumption of the standard S2.